Arlington, MA – In our third game on the night we made the trip to the Ed Burns Arena for the Arlington Spy Ponders home opener taking on last year’s D4 runner-up Watertown, having formed a new co-op this season with Wayland and moving up to D3.
From the drop of the puck, Arlington took control of the game and never gave it back. The Spy Ponders opened up the scoring in the first, at 11:46 when forward Drew Fecteau hit the crossbar with a shot from top of the circle and forward Killian Wright banged home the rebound into an open net giving Arlington the 1-0 lead. Just over a minute later freshman Nolan Russell walked the Watertown-Wayland defenseman and snuck a shot through traffic, Casey Williams made a pad save but the rebound landed on James Yunes‘ stick and he scored giving Arlington the 2-0 lead. Watertown had a few sustained rushes for the next few minutes but Arlington had other plans when Jake Russell banged home a Wright rebound over the right shoulder of the Watertown-Wayland goaltender making it 3-0 to end the period. Watertown was under siege most of the period but Williams made a handful of saves to keep their hopes alive.
The second period was all Arlington, as they outscored Watertown-Wayland 6-0. At the 10:53 mark there was a scrum in front of the Watertown-Wayland goalie when Fecteau banged home a Wright rebound giving them the 4-0 lead. Two minutes later Arlington’s Stephanos Sotiropoulos picked off a puck in the neutral zone and went in on a 2-on-1 with Liam Gore. Sotiropoulos slid a nice pass over to Gore who beat the sprawling goalie for the 5-0 lead. One minute later another turnover lead to a 3-on-2 for Arlington. Wright fired a shot off the far pad of Williams and Fecteau banged home his second and the sixth Arlington goal of the game. Watertown-Wayland had a couple minutes of zone time before a quick breakout and dump-in by the Spy Ponders. The puck got wrapped around the zone to Arlington’s Ryan Gilbert at the point. He walked the blue line and put a shot through a screen and Sean Mansfield collected and buried the rebound giving Arlington the 7-0 lead. Forty seconds later Watertown-Wayland turned the puck over once again and Sotiropoulos got a puck to the net and Gore finished the rebound making it an 8-0 game. Watertown-Wayland decided to take a time out to try and regroup with a few minutes to go in the period. Like the rest of the period, after the TO it was all Arlington as Evan Jones would end the period when he received a D-to-D pass and walked down the zone beating Williams far side with a quick shot: ending the period with a 9-0 lead for Arlington.
It didn’t take long in the third period for Arlington to strike again. Two minutes into the period Jake Russell carried the puck out of his zone beating a Watertown-Wayland defenseman wide and went in on a breakaway against Williams and beat him near-side for the 10th Arlington goal of the night. Although Watertown-Wayland struggled for offensive zone time, they would finally get on the board. With 3:19 to go in the period, Luke Galizio ripped home a rebound from Sam Brande beating Arlington goalie Ryan Martin over his right shoulder from the bottom of the faceoff circle. The final score ended up as Arlington 10 Watertown-Wayland 1.
Three Stars:
- F Drew Fecteau, Arlington
- F Killian Wright, Arlington
- F Liam Gore, Arlington